Acts 4: 29 – 31
“And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Your bond-servants may speak Your word with all confidence, while You extend Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.
I am very much encouraged by the number of pastors who are breaking out of restrictive molds and are preaching the Word of God with boldness. I have been meditating on this scripture for a couple of months now and I am convinced this is a word for today. It is not for pastors only and we err gravely if we think so. This prayer came out of a gathering of believers where they were all in one accord with a hunger for God and passion for His power to be made manifest in their lives, but not only in their lives but through them too. That is big. Shall we yield ourselves to speak with confidence? Note that the first thing said was the acknowledgment that they were under threat. As a matter of fact, this episode occurred when Peter and John were released from jail so the threat was real. Their response to being jailed was to pray for confidence and boldness to do more.
Lord let your power be seen! The next thing the believers asked of God was for His hand to accompany their bold speech. So they had a picture in their minds. They envisioned speaking the Word of God with confidence while God complemented their speech with miracles of healing and signs and wonders. Can you see the image that was in their minds of what their meetings should look like? These guys were ready to take the world.
Then the best part of all. God answered and He answered in a big way. Because of their boldness in prayer, because they were passionate enough to ask God for big meetings and powerful moves, He answered them loudly. His presence came in that building and touched every person there and the whole building shook from the power and presence. Was the building just not designed to hold that much anointing, that much power or was the building rejoicing? I don’t know but what I get out of this is that God got excited! He answered them immediately. He gave them what they asked for and He did it with such personal zeal that everything shook. Man, I want to be in that meeting.
Does your heart leap at this idea? Does your spirit crave Holy Spirit encounters? Are you desperate for God to get loud in your meetings? Brother I am. Today’s passage shows us what we need, what Peter and John did that made God want to be in their meetings. Let’s do it too. Let’s get up off of that pew. Shake the building. Why not?
